Lecture 1 Introduction

Gang He

January 27, 2025

2024 is the first year to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial level

Welcome and icebreaker

• Rose: “something that is working well or something positive”
• Thorn: “something that isn’t working or something negative”
• Bud: “an area of opportunity or idea yet to be explored”

What brings you here?

• Concerned topics?
• Motivations?
• Dream jobs?

Climate Policy under Trump Administration 2.0

• Putting America First In International Environmental Agreements (withdrawal from Paris Agreement)
• Unleashing Alaska’s Extraordinary Resource Potential
• Temporary Withdrawal of All Areas on the Outer Continental Shelf from Offshore Wind Leasing and Review of the Federal Government’s Leasing and Permitting Practices for Wind Projects
• Declaring a National Energy Emergency

Not fast enough

How the exponential growth of solar will change the energy sector and the economy?

Why PAF4199?

• Policy matters
  • Research
  • Jobs
• Clean energy transition to achieve climate goals

Organization

• Syllabus
• Brightspace
• Course website: https://drganghe.github.io/energy-climate-society/
• Policy response (10): 20%
• Mock Climate Negotiation: 10%
• Assignments (4): 20%
• Proposal: 10%
• Final presentations: 20%
• Policy memo: 20%

Mock Climate Negotiation

• Pre-negotiation (Position paper)
• Simulation day (Presentation and negotiation)
• Post-negotiation (Reflection)

Climate guest speakers

• 2/3 – Dr. Josiah Johnston: Big data, AI, energy and climate analysis
• 2/10 – Jieru He: Assessing Climate Risk Through Stress Testing in Financial Institutions
• 3/10 – Dr. Siobhan Watson: Integrating sustainability and resiliency into public housing
• 3/31 – Dr. Kaihui Song: Leveraging subnational capacity for equitable decarbonization
• 4/21 – Dr. Malte Toetzke: Monitoring innovation in climate-tech with AI
• 4/28 – Ines Benachir: Life Cycle Analysis and Ecodesign of PV Panels
• To be updated

Contents

• Climate change
  • Impact
  • Mitigation
  • Adaption
  • Governance

• Energy systems
  • Supply
  • Demand
  • Economics
  • Technology

• Tools/skills
  • Data analysis
  • Economic analysis
  • Energy-economy-environment

An analytical approach

Data-driven, evidence-based, energy and climate policy

Using analytic approach to answer questions such as:

• What will be the climate future if we do nothing?
• What technology to invest to achieve our climate goal?
• What will be the impact to climate under Trump 2.0?
• How NYS/NYC could achieve its climate goals?

A five points “climate haiku”

1. It’s warming
2. It’s us
3. We’re sure
4. It’s bad
5. We can fix it

Climate and energy systems are both complicated

The Energy Trillemma: Balancing trade-offs

Energy security: Ensure reliable energy supply

Energy equity: Provide universal access to reliable, affordable, and abundant energy

Environmental Sustainability: Avoid environmental harm or climate impact

Those goals sometimes conflict with each other, and decisions has to make trade-offs between them

Energy, economy, and environment

Economy: Decent living? Growth? Degrowth?

Environment: Emissions, ecosystems constraints/goals

Energy: Work within constraints

Energy great achievements

Energy grand challenges: SDGs

Energy grand challenges: net-zero

Renewables are achieving grid parity

Implications are profound

References

Grant, Neil, Adam Hawkes, Tamaryn Napp, and Ajay Gambhir. 2021. “Cost Reductions in Renewables Can Substantially Erode the Value of Carbon Capture and Storage in Mitigation Pathways.” One Earth 4 (11): 1588–1601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.10.024.

He, Gang, Jiang Lin, Froylan Sifuentes, Xu Liu, Nikit Abhyankar, and Amol Phadke. 2020. “Rapid Cost Decrease of Renewables and Storage Accelerates the Decarbonization of China’s Power System.” Nature Communications 11 (1): 2486. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-16184-x.

IEA. 2021. “Net Zero by 2050.” International Energy Agency.

IRENA. 2021. “Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2021.” Abu Dhabi: International Renewable Energy Agency. https://www.irena.org/publications/2022/Jul/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2021.